Dene Park on a warm mormning

Five Speckled Wood butterflies, four males perching, one passng by which was immediately attacked, so probably also a male, all along the Knight's Park track today.

One Red Admiral, north of the dog bin triangle, on the bracken, and also flying very powerfully, particularly in comparison with the Speckled Woods earlier on.

Denge Wood

5 male Common Blues, 2 Duke of Burgundies, and 1 Dingy Skipper.

Very nice to see the Dingy Skipper, Erynnis tages, a species I only occasionally see! The caterpillar food plant is the Common Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, present in reasonable numbers on this site. Horseshoe Vetch and Greater Birds-Foot Trefoil are alternatives.

This is a better photo of the butterfly's stubby head, with its prominent eyes and protruding palps.

This photo shows the long hairs around the abdomen which I think must originate at least partly on the top of the hind wings - function probably complex!

I have seen this butterfly before in May, but the flight period of the adult extends rather later in the year than I expected, continuing in June, so I still need to keep my eyes open. I have seen this species before at this site, in 2015 and it was also found for me at Fackenden Down in 2016 - good photo from the last site, a fresher specimen than this one!

The national distribution map seems to indicate that larger numbers seem to found in the Eastern part of the North Downs, but this may be due to site size rather than site suitability. The butterfly likes basking on bare ground and the broken cover may also encourage the food plant, the Birds-Foot Trefoil. However the butterfly also likes taller plants for shelter and perching. Some of the colonies are quite small and discrete, and exploitation of new areas is likely to be slow. Large sites or meta-populations of small sites are the most likely to persist.

Females tend to lay eggs on the tops of leaves on the longest shoots of large food-plants in sheltered warm situations, perhaps on south-facing slopes, or in wind-protected hollows. The larvae spin leaves together to form a succession of little tents in which they feed throughout the summer and then into the winter (a hibernaculum), and they pupate in the spring in one last nest as well.

The butterfly is declining nationally, by about 40%. Sites tend to get overgrown and brownfield sites may get developed, so continued renewal of sites is sensible. 

Blues at the Lawrence Betts Reservoir

Three male Common Blues, Polyommatus icarus, seen this evening, downslope, and partly out of the wind, on the reservoir's walls.

Access Trail and a couple of old stagers

Along the Access Trail to check for Butterflies - and the "old stagers" of two Peacocks and One Comma popped up along the herbicide strip alongside the Access Trail to reassure me that there are usually at least some butterflies there, these species having bravely over-wintered, and lasted until now!

The Comma was resting on the leaves of the Elms beyond the dip, looking quite tatty:

The second of the two Peacocks posed on one of the fence posts. The broad body seems to sit in a little "valley" of the cupped inner wing. The thorax hairs have been worn entirely off.

There were also a coupled of male Banded Demoiselle's seen.

Coney Banks and Small Blues

The target species today was the Small Blue - surely I would finally find this butterfly which has eluded me for so long?

Yes! In exactly the expected places along the base of the slope there were at least seven individuals spotted, probably most, if not all, males, as this is where they are supposed to gather, for example basking on grass stems, waiting for the innocent (?) females to arrive, mate and then depart to explore clumps of kidney vetch, their only known food plant in the UK.

This is one of the males, that posed, first with its wings closed, then gradually opened.

Broad-leaved Everlasting Pea Lathyrus latifolius was present on much of the slope, but I missed the unusual Yellow Vetchling, Lathyrus aphaca.

Rye Harbour with Phil

A lovely sunny day down at Rye today. How nice to see Phil.

Met the impressive Nick, doing visitor liaison at the portakabins.

Too windy at Lullingstone

White Hill Reserve and Fackenden Down

Too cold and breezy for butterflies today, but some nice flowers!

It has been a particularly good year for Cowslips at White Hill - because of the dry conditions or the earlier mild winter perhaps?

Little Ringed Plover Oare Marshes

Today turned out warm and briefly calm for a while in the afternoon when I arrived at Oare Marshes. It was lovely to see a few of the usual birds on the East Flood, and a kind couple kindly pointed out a Peregrine Falcon on top of one of the electricity pylons inland of the West Flood hide.

Shortly after that I picked out a Little Ringed Plover, Charadrius dubius, (Scopoli, 1786), on the little mud spit on this side of the East Flood, from its yellow eye-ring, and then its noticeably black bill. I rather missed the pattern of white above the eye narrowing to the rear, but continuing and widening centrally over the front of the black forehead, but was reminded of this by the wonderful BTO video ID guide. This was my first ever definite sighting of this species, so it was very exciting indeed! It really did seem to have superficially pretty much the same black and white head pattern as a Ringed Plover. It bounced or "bobbed" up and down a little, and did seem a bit more slender and fragile generally. Some photos did seem to suggest a thinner beak than the commoner Ringed Plover.

There are about 1200 - 1400 breeding pairs in the UK, and the first known breeding was apparently in 1938, and it has been greatly encouraged by various gravel pit constructions over the latter half of the 20th Century. It is a summer visitor, over-wintering in West and possibly also Central Africa. The UK breeding population is about 1% of the European population, and the birds that come to the UK and western Europe are of the subspecies curonicus. In the photo below the dark eye-stripe clearly dips well down behind the eye, almost into a point.

The birds rely on fairly bare ground, only partly vegetated, so require newly disturbed habitat on a fairly regular basis. Predator control by placing cages over the nests seems to have something of a positive effect, together with habitat management, improving productivity and gradually increasing numbers. From the breadth of the breast band in the photo below I would guess that this bird is a male.

A fly got into the background of the photo below.

Salix viminalis hybrid?

Went back to the probable Salix viminalis (L.) x ? hybrid by the gate along by the newly planted birch) today and took a photo of some retrieved leaves. These may not be entirely characteristic as the tree has been pollarded in the recent past, so the shoots are perhaps a bit sucker-like.

My best guess is that it is a hybrid with Salix caprea (L.), known as Salix x sericans Tausch ex A. Kerner or Salix x laurina in the older version of the Kent flora. However it could be the hybrid with S. cinerea

This is a cklose up of the leaves, two upper sides and one lower (the topmost leaf). There appears to be fairly strong reticulate venation patterns (this is what seems to me to be giving a "Goat Willow" look to the upperside of the leaf, and what we hope is a fairly tomentellous underside.

Here is a slightly enlarged view, again showing the "Goat-Willow" appearance of the leaf. The insect damage could perhaps be early Capsid Bug.

Other clues are a largely yellow-green sometimes glossy (lustrous) twig, a slightly recurved, somewhat undulate margin to the leaf, no obvious striae. I could see no stipules at all - possibly they are not noticeable at this time of year?  I am not sure how much before the leaves that the catkins appeared, I need to double-check next year. , The female catkins are of close to 5 cm in length, and are quite numerous clustered towards the ends of the twigs